Sunday, November 25, 2012

I am frustrated. About a lot of things - but mostly about my inability to get the nrf24l01 radio and any Ethernet adapter to coexist on an Arduino. I have three Ethernet shields - a very old one from Adafruit, one of the latest Arduino versions, and a ENC28J60 Chinese module I got off eBay.

I use the rf24 library and it is wonderful for talking to the radio and it makes things quite simple, and rock solid. There are various Ethernet libraries for the ENC28J60 - and it seems that I have tried them all.

When I use either Ethernet or the RF24 separately it works. But trying to combine it into the same sketch either it won't start, or something collides in the software libraries and I strange behavior, but no connectivity.

They both use SPI and the I am lead to believe that using the CS (Chip select) to turn one chip off allows the other to take over and use the SPI *bus*. But since I am using libraries i do not quite know if they are behaving normally and releasing their chip select each time.

My goal, which seems simple and straight forward enough, is to take readings from various sensors inside and outside and send them off to ThinkSpeak, COSM, WeatherUnderground. I have a small C# app I run on the desktop, but that means I have to leave the computer on 24/7 and burning up all that power. Plus the C# app interferes with some of the other things I do on the desktop and consumes a lot of resources besides. I seem to be killing the app often to read the mail or whatever and forgetting to turn it back on.

So all I need is a standalone Arduino sketch to send the data in. So far no luck. I have goggled to try and find someone else that has managed this task, but no one seems to have done it, or is not publishing how they did. Clos4est I got was a post Fixing an enc28J60 based Arduino Mega ethertnet shield
I will be trying this hack out - but there is precious little detail. Wish me luck.